


Devotion

by Nanyoky



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ancient Greece & Rome, Alternate Universe - Ancient Rome, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, F/M, Gen, Goddesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-06 02:10:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12807339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanyoky/pseuds/Nanyoky
Summary: Devotion to a Goddess cannot be split, but it can be blended.





	Devotion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/gifts).



> OOOF. I've been a bad fic writer. Trying to get back on the horse pushing through some LONG STANDING prompts. I'm not entirely happy with how this one turned out- couldn't balance subtly with clarity in a way that felt right, so it feels messy to me. Long and short is: I don't intend for Hecate to be a "villain" in this. However you want to take that is up to you.  
> As always, thanks to EssayofThoughts for the prompts and chats!

_“I require only one.”_

It was the first words Wanda remembered hearing. From her mistress. Her commander. The deity her soul was bound to from birth. She had no knowledge of how old she was when she heard it. It was perhaps her oldest memory. She remembered both fear and trust in equal measure. It was a comfortable memory. Like the smell of the oil her mother used in her hair. Like her father’s laugh. Like Pietro’s hand in hers.

She was not truly afraid when the goddess first spoke to her, and she was not afraid when their parents lay cold and stiff in the ground.

“Where will we go?”

He had gripped her hand in his fear and Wanda had breathed slowly. She heard hounds calling. Crying and howling. And flames. Two flames that stared at her through the blackness behind her eyelids.

She took him to the temple and closed her eyes and shut her mind when the voice came again.

_“I require only one.”_

“We come together.”

She responded then the second time she heard the call and felt a hound’s hot breath on her neck.

_“Only one is required for my pack.”_

But the priestesses took them both into the temple and fed them. Wanda did not feel the need to tell Pietro that it was her alone that was truly welcomed. It did not matter. They were not truly separate from one another, and the goddess would have to see that.

~

The priestesses learned soon enough that she was chosen. From the way she woke them in the night, hours before someone would stumble up the temple steps for aid. How she could sit quietly for whole afternoons, only to begin speaking softly to no one at all as the sun set. She was followed by dogs whenever she went to market and they only obeyed her when it was time for them to leave.

_“I require only one.”_

“We are the same, Mistress.” She smelled the forest. “We come or go together.”

Her ears filled with the howling of a wild pack.

_“You are stronger than your twin, my witch. You do not need him.”_

They were hiking through the rocky hills. Wanda gathered plants while Pietro stalked along the edge of the cliff. The best heather grew in the rocks up high.

“I do.”

_“You will learn to live without him. I will teach you.”_

A clump of rocks shifted and tumbled down the steep cliff face. Wanda’s breath stuck in her throat, watching the wind lift Pietro’s hair across his face as he watched the herders below.

_“I require only one for my pack.”_

“I am not one of your dogs.”

The howling on the wind broke into snarls and barks. She could feel the teeth on her ankles, keeping her from moving toward Pietro as he paced.

_“You are young. You are not yet a woman. I have chosen you, and that means you are_ my _woman. You must remove yourself from the need for him. The desire for him. You need no one but your mistress.”_

“We are not dogs. We are your torches. We burn together with the same flame.”

The pack faded from the wind slowly. Wanda watched Pietro and the rock under his feet, feeling cold. But a soft laugh came on a warm breeze that lifted her hair out of her face.

_“I do enjoy a witch who can talk her way out of anything.”_

“Pietro-“ her voice was finally allowed to rise above the wind. “We’re going now.”

~

They grew and soon he dreamt of running so fast he flew.

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“You’re not leaving. The temple of Hermes is down the street.”

“But-“

Wanda shushed any of his protests. She knew this calling was a compromise. A position in service arranged by her own mistress. He had to accept, if her goddess was ever to stop seeing him as a threat to Wanda’s devotion.

“You will be perfect with them. And we will still spend every moment we can with each other.”

He gripped her hands and kissed her before taking a small pack of his things to the temple down the street.

She was right. They still spent their time together, whenever possible. Wanda spent their next years praying and walking the alley to Hermes’ temple. Sometimes he came to her, and other times they met in the middle.

_“Beware distractions.”_

“Pietro is not a distraction.” She did not question her goddess on any subject but this. “He is my heart. I would not live without him.”

The rain outside growled, but did not grow to snapping jaws.

_“Your twin is kept safe for you in service to the fleet footed one. Soon enough, my girl. You will understand soon enough.”_

Wanda put it from her mind and kept her devotion to her mistress and her twin in balance. It was beautiful and complex, she thought. The way she wove bits and pieces of her two idols into one another. Every thread of protection she wove into Pietro’s clothes were full of the power her mistress had granted her. Every prayer was constructed on the way he spoke and told her stories.

~

“I… I am here to give thanks.”

Wanda did not normally greet those who came to the temple. The priestesses guided people of the city while she devoted herself to her studies and worship. But the temple was all but empty, and the man addressed her.

“Welcome.” It seemed the right thing to say to a soldier come to give thanks. “How do you give thanks to my mistress? And for what?”

“I…” the man seemed unsure, but held out a straw mat. “I have brought the goddess Hecate these dates and wine to thank her for my safety and return to the city after battle.”

“It seems odd to choose my mistress for this safety.”

The soldier clearly did not expect to be challenged on this. He blinked clear grey eyes at her and hurried to reply.

“I- I was wounded. The men thought I was dead and returned to the city. I woke and a pack of dogs led me home in the dark. I asked the blind seer in the square. He said your mistress had seen to protect me.”

Wanda listened, but didn’t hear the pack outside on the whistling breeze. There was no permission, no warning against.

“The alter is here.”

~

For the next weeks, her mistress was silent. It felt like a test and Wanda felt she was failing. But she didn’t much care when the soldier’s hands slid her dress up her thighs, slow and reverent like he was waiting for rebuke as much as she. But she didn’t ask him to stop, and her mistress remained silent as they breathed in the sounds the other made in her small, plain room in the back of the temple.

~

_“I have indulged you too much, little witch.”_

Wanda was almost relieved when she heard her mistress speak to her once more in the dark of the night.

_“I do not stand for half of a follower.”_

“I give nothing by halves, mistress.”

_“I have allowed your twin to keep a piece of your devotion-“_

“The only way you could lose my devotion—“ she had never interrupted her mistress before. Her fear almost closed her throat, but she couldn’t have stopped if she tried—“Is if I lost Pietro.”

In her dreams, hounds ripped the flesh from her bones and she felt every moment of it. She woke the whole temple with her screams. She didn’t stop until one of the other disciples ran down the street and brought Pietro to her. He held her through the night as the screams faded to sobs, the sobs to whimpers, and the whimpers to prayers and promises. She held him as she wove every protection she knew into his skin and bones.

~

Wanda thought she would never stop fearing. She had angered her mistress and the fear of the consequences outweighed even the shame and guilt at how she had behaved.

And yet- life pushed forward from one day to the next. She still prayed. Still met Pietro in the alley. Shared everything with him. Everything but her fear. It felt deceptive- like a betrayal. She knew that was stupid. She knew giving Pietro her own fear would just cause him more unnecessary worry. But it still ate at the edges of her mind- hot and dry like her thoughts were singed cloth.

“There’s something wrong.”

She always was the perceptive one, but they were more alike than different. Wanda tried to smile and shake her head at her twin.

“What? With the weaving?”

They had met in the alley for her to pass along a new shirt she had been working on. Wanda could see the threads of protection settling over his shoulders as he straightened it. Pietro gave her a look.

“You are anxious, Wanda.” He sat next to her and gripped her hand. “Did something happen?”

“Nothing. I just worry when I don’t see you often enough.”

He gave her a look that said there was no point in lying to him. Wanda sighed.

“You are all that matters, Pietro.” She lifted his hand and kissed his knuckles. “You _know_ that.”

“Of course. We just have one another. So what is it?”

She shook her head, then dropped it onto his shoulder. “That is all. You’re all that I care about. And I am going to keep you safe.”

He held still for a moment before nodding and squeezing her hand tight.

~

A week later, he saw them together. Wanda should have known it was inevitable. She had been foolish not to tell him, she knew that. But it had felt like a step in her life she was not ready to take.

The soldier’s mouth slid over her temple while her hands wandered over the hard lines of his stomach. He lifted her against the wall by her thighs and Wanda knew the stone scraping her back through her dress should hurt, but the heat from the scratches only fueled her pounding heart.

“Please- yes-“

He swallowed her next cry with his kiss. They were meant to be quiet. They hadn’t been able to wait for the next moment she could let him into her room, so they had met behind the temple instead. It had seemed innocent enough, especially since Wanda had already seen Pietro that morning to share their breakfast. But as her lover readjusted his grip on her thigh, she looked over his shoulder and locked eyes with her surprised twin.

~

She and Pietro didn’t speak of the incident at all. It changed nothing between them. But even so, Wanda drew away from her lover after her twin had seen them together. It only felt right.

~

_“Now do you understand, my girl?”_

Wanda could no longer feel her knees, she had been praying for so long. She squeezed her eyes tight and breathed slowly as the voice came from the alter before her.

_“Your loyalty to your brother is stronger than that to your lover. When forced, you will choose. I do not warn against these attachments to be cruel. I only wish to keep you safe.”_

“Of course. Of course.” She whispered to the stone, determined not to let her anger, or her fear show. “I understand, mistress. I understand everything.”

And she did. More than she wanted to, or thought her mistress wanted her to.

~

Pietro was killed when soldiers sacked the temples during the next invasion. The priestesses had to tie her down as she screamed and thrashed for weeks. Even when her voice failed her, she was wracked with silent sobs.

Her mistress said nothing.

~                                                                                        

When she could finally eat and leave her room once more, Wanda’s every moment was devoted. She wondered if her mistress was pleased. She wondered if this had been her mistress’s design all along.

So as she summoned the life back into his body—weaving lines of his heart and soul together, just like the tunics she had always made for him—she heard no voice. But the hounds still called, joyous and in harmony. And when he finally returned to her, smelling like autumn leaves and burnt cedar, she understood at last her own devotion. Not split, not divided, but twisted, manipulated, and now completely, inescapably joined.


End file.
